For the first time in 10 years, environmental rule-writers are reconsidering just how much Atlanta sewage should be allowed to wash downstream toward neighbors in DeKalb and beyond. It should be pretty much zero, activists say. Not gonna happen, says the city.

What Atlanta has now is a “third-world approach” toward sewage disposal, said Jacqueline Echols, president of the South River Watershed Alliance. The South River starts in East Point and flows through Atlanta, south DeKalb County, and points southeast before emptying into Jackson Lake.

She refers to Atlanta’s approach as such because in some of the oldest parts of the city — English Avenue and Vine City — the same set of pipes is supposed to handle both rainwater and toilet flushes. When it rains too hard, the system can’t handle everything, and some of what goes down area toilets runs into area streams without being fully treated. Running a system that allows such sewage spread shows zero respect for people on the river, Echols says.

The SRWA and some other groups are calling for environmental regulators to clamp down on pollution from sewage overflows. The state Environmental Protection Division is now in the middle of its periodic review of the pair of permits that say what Atlanta can flush westward toward the Chattahoochee and eastward toward Jackson Lake.